The
probe, one of the largest in
recent history, was born out
of the U.S. Justice Department
investigation of the Bank of
New York's role in large-scale
money laundering from Russia
in 1999.

The Washington Times | June 23,
2002

Marc
Rich Linked To $9 Billion Money Laundering
Investigation

By P.K. Semler

MILAN, Italy - European
prosecutors say that documents identifying
Marc Rich - the American fugitive
who won an 11th-hour pardon from President
Clinton - have turned up during a
crackdown on money laundering and the
Russian mafia.

While
Mr. Rich has not been named as a suspect,
prosecutors do not rule out issuing a
subpoena or even an arrest warrant for him
as their investigation develops.

Magistrates in Bologna said Mr. Rich's
name and companies with whom he has been
affiliated repeatedly surfaced during
"Operation Spiderweb," which was carried
out last week by Swiss and European police
forces in cooperation with the FBI.

A top executive with Mr. Rich's
companies said there was no link between
Mr. Rich and the companies identified in
the documents.

The operation led to the arrests of 50
persons, and 150 more are under
investigation in connection with a $500
million money-laundering ring.

The probe, one
of the largest in recent history, was
born out of the U.S. Justice Department
investigation of the Bank of New York's
role in large-scale money laundering
from Russia in 1999.

The "Spiderweb" probe focused on the
repatriation of funds from the Bank of New
York and offshore centers to Russia
through Italian and other European front
companies.

"Basically, the Russians were sending
all the money that they could out of the
country, and at one point, many of the
same people decided they wanted to bring
the money back," one Italian investigator
said.

"The problem was, as they had illegally
sent the money out, now they had to find a
way to re-launder, or make their money
legal for the Russian authorities. So they
decided to use friendly Italian companies
to issue false invoices or send goods to
Russia and make everything look more or
less legit."

Bologna's chief investigating
magistrate, Paolo Giovagnoli, said
in an interview that his office does not
exclude either issuing a subpoena for Mr.
Rich as a "person informed about the
facts" " a warrant similar to that of an
unindicted co-conspirator in the United
States " or issuing an arrest warrant if
incriminating evidence emerges against Mr.
Rich.

"Right now, we have 150 people under
investigation and 50 people under arrest
and would like to question these people
first before naming other people as
suspects. Currently, Marc Rich is not on
the list of those under investigation, but
his name has appeared in relationship with
those who are," Mr. Giovagnoli said.

"I cannot exclude that our office will
issue a subpoena or arrest warrant based
on the testimony of those under
investigation," he said.

He said he would send any evidence he
uncovers linking Mr. Rich to money
laundering to Swiss authorities so that
they can decide whether to prosecute
him.

Because of his Swiss citizenship, Mr.
Rich cannot be extradited from the country
that he has used as his base since the
1970s, but recent changes in Swiss law
have made money laundering a serious
offense with heavy criminal penalties.

Mr. Giovagnoli said he first wants to
question Grigori Loutchansky, whose
Nordex company has been linked with Mr.
Rich.

Mr. Loutchansky,
who has Israeli
citizenship, is considered by
law-enforcement authorities to be a major
figure in the Russian organized-crime
network, Mr. Giovagnoli said.

"I have an Interpol report that states
that Marc Rich was one of the founding
partners of Nordex," he said. According to
prosecutors, Nordex, a company based in
Vienna, Austria, with offices in Germany,
Ireland, Lithuania, Russia, Switzerland
and Ukraine, is accused of having had a
central role in the money-laundering
operation uncovered by the "Spiderweb"
operation.

In court documents in Britain,
authorities maintain that Mr. Rich was a
founding partner of Nordex. They say
Nordex was "created by the old guard of
the communist regime to allow the exodus
of U.S.S.R. Communist Party funds before
the Soviet Union's collapse."

Mr. Loutchansky was expelled from
Britain in 1994.

Authorities say Mr. Rich's name also
surfaces in connection with Benex, a
company named in former U.S. Attorney
Mary Jo White's investigation of
suspected money laundering by the Bank of
New York. Italian magistrates say Mr.
Rich, as the principal director of
Glencore International AG, had a direct
relationship with Benex. Although the true
owners of Benex were never conclusively
identified in Miss White's investigation,
Benex's offices, located on Queens
Boulevard in Forest Hills, N.Y., shared
the same building with two companies
connected with Mr. Loutchansky.

U.S. and Italian authorities say that a
good part of the money laundered on behalf
of the Russian mafia and businesses passed
through Benex's Bank of New York account
and that from June to December of 1998
there had been a number of wire transfers
from the "Glencore of Rich" to Benex for a
total of $178,000.

Authorities were not clear whether the
"Glencore of Rich" refers to Mr. Rich's
Zug, Switzerland, finance and trading
company Marc Rich & Co. Holding Gmbh
or Glencore International AG, one the
world's major commodity-trading companies
with an annual turnover of $44.5
billion.

Mr. Rich had sold his entire stake in
Glencore in 1994, in part because of a
messy divorce with his ex-wife,
Denise, a songwriter and Democratic
Party fund-raiser.

Both Glencore International and Marc
Rich & Co. Holding said they never had
any dealings with either Nordex or
Benex.

Thomas P. Furtig, the chief
executive officer of Marc Rich & Co.
Holding Gmbh, said without elaboration
that the company has never had ties with
Nordex and that "everyone knows who are
the owners of Nordex."

Mr. Furtig also said that he had never
heard of Benex until it was mentioned in
the Italian press.

Mr. Furtig later issued a written
statement that "Marc Rich Holding and its
subsidiary companies have never been
involved in the transfer of funds or
stolen assets from the Soviet Union to
other countries."

The Observer (16Jun02) provided an
update to the reporting of "Operation
Spiderweb" and Igor Berezovsky and Oleg
Berezovskii (surname spelled both ways).
The estimated money laundering has been
increased to $9 billion. That plus the
estimated $15 billion in the earlier
stories at Bank of New York, gets us a bit
closer to the estimated total of $300 -
$500 billion in loot from the FSU.

RFE reports that Nordex and Grigori
Loutchansky are part of the investigation
by "Operation Spiderweb", a European
anti-mafia operation conducted by several
police agencies. Earlier reports had
linked Nordex and Grigori Emmanuilovich
"Lucky Loutchano" Loutchansky to such
prominent names as Marc Rich (the
Mossad
operative who was pardoned by President
Bill Clinton), Viktor
Chernomyrdin (an earlier prime
minister of Russia, co-chairman of the
Gore-Chernomyrdin commission, and
currently ambassador to Ukraine), Vadim
Rabinovich (an earlier business
partner of Nordex/Loutchansky, adviser to
Leonid Kuchma, and currently the
president of the All-Ukrainian Jewish
Congress), Yury Luzhkov the mayor
of Moscow, a failed steel deal with
Kazakhstan President Nursultan
Nazarbayev and the Israeli Eisenberg
group, and the gangster Semion
Mogilevich.